2008 Super Bowl Predictions

Super Bowl Traffic Predictions:
More than 70,000 football fans, most from out of state, will be trying to find the Super Bowl stadium. That section of freeway is badly marked, and the surface street traffic patterns around the stadium are bizarre on normal days. The area is full of shopping centers, with a few of them large enough to be called malls.

I predict that some of the fans will end up watching the game at a Taco Bell in a nearby shopping center because they got lost. They will be within sight of the stadium but unable to figure out the magic route through the maze of shopping centers and access roads. Neither Google maps nor an in-car navigaiton service will help them because the police change the traffic routing for stadium events.

If you are driving to the game, fill up the gas tank, start early, and pack your lunch. Pack your dinner too. It's going to be a long drive, and even longer in the traffic jam leading to the stadium. If you reach Wickenburg, you went too far north.

Super Bowl Lodging Predictions:
In an absolute no-brainer, I predict that hotels and motels all over the valley have raised their rates to double or triple their usual extortionate winter rates. After all, keeping Arizona green is a good thing.

If the hotels are full, Craigslist.com listings for housing can help you out, but for a price that makes the a 5-star resort look affordable. A thousand dollars or so will get you a weekend in a mediocre tract home near the freeway leading to the stadium. See my comments on traffic: commuting distance means somewhere near the freeway next to the stadium. That freeway makes a huge loop around Phoenix, so football fans can end up 80 miles away from the game, on the far side of the Phoenix metro area, and still technically be within "commuting distance".

Super Bowl Behavior Predictions:
I predict that drunken and belligerent AFC fans will be clashing with drunken and belligerent NFC fans at bars, hotels and motels all over the metro Phoenix area. I can always hope that the teams have cute animal mascots, so we who don't go to the game can see costumed fans pummeling the stuffing out of each other. A good Super Bowl match would be the Dallas Cowboys and the Baltimore Colts, for obvious comic reasons.